For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off (Johnny Carson)

I'm reading a blurb in today's newspaper about the memorial service for publisher/ex-diplomat Phillip Merrill. It says that 1,500 attended. One thousand. Five hundred.

Mr. O'Laughlin, my fifth grade social studies teacher who was wiser than I ever gave him credit for at the time, once told us that if, when you die, you can count on one hand the number of friends you have, then you have died a rich man. I believe this to be true and that is what makes it so extraordinary to me that fifteen hundred people offered their condolences to Merrill's family. It is hard to conceive that all those people were entirely sincere in their sentiments.

Oh, do not think that I believe that associates will not be affected by the untimely death of someone they know, and even that they will feel a pang of loss as well as sympathy for the survivors, but when these grand DC memorial services reach such heights in attendance and "importance," I find it difficult to imagine the event has not become entirely politicized. It is the antithesis of what I would ever want for myself or a family member.

Many of you may argue that such a huge swelling of human flesh is good and right because these people are just paying their respects and honoring a great person, much like the Rosa Parks memorial services. However, I believe that funerals and memorial services are very intimate occassions - very difficult for the surviving family members. I don't believe that publishing accounts of the affair in the newspaper or bringing in the Vice President contributes any merit to the service. (Admittedly, there are many people who would rather have the all-out soire than to have a private family affair, and I fully support their right to do this. I am only explaining my aversion to the whole idea.)

When my grandmother died, it was an incredibly difficult time for my family. There were too many loose ends for some, and not enough time for others. We experienced a loss so deep that it physically hurt. She was a tour de force and no one who met her could ever forget her. She was blessedly unique.

While I was not directly involved in arranging the funeral affairs (that would be my mother), I do know that there was some opposition to a viewing and my grandmother's burial being overseen by a priest. In the end it was arranged to have a public viewing and a private family-only funeral with a Catholic priest.

What happened was tragic. Friends and associates of my grandmother came to the viewing and loudly discussed how disappointed they were that they were not invited to the funeral as well. They actually sat there and planned to have a little cemetery gathering at the burial site immediately after the family funeral was over. It was rude, thoughtless, and downright vicious.

I understand that they were upset at the loss of my grandmother, and that is specifically why my mother held a public viewing in the first place. However, I feel that the family's decision should have been respected. We needed to grieve too.

It makes you wonder if these people were really her friends. What kind of pepple can do that to a family?

So it all comes back to counting your friends on one hand. Me personally, I would only want my closest friends and family in attendance. (And I don't want a funeral at all - I don't plan to be buried.) And frankly, that would be a very small number. I wouldn't want people like those at my grandmother's funeral to make my surviving family members as miserable as we were. Losing a loved one is already difficult enough - doing so in the public eye (like the Merrill family) is unthinkable.

I may as well start making up an attendance list now...